


A Choice That Doesn't Matter

by rex101111



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Ending spoilers to The Painful, Gen, Introspection, oh goodness my navel is looking amazing today, well kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21663055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex101111/pseuds/rex101111
Summary: It doesn't matter either way, not really.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	A Choice That Doesn't Matter

**Author's Note:**

> Have not actually played any of the LISA games but I HAVE seen a few videos about it so obviously that makes me an expert on the message these games are trying to convey....or at least my surface level understanding of them anyway.

Imagine that there's a man in front of you, a dying man. He's injured, bleeding and on his knees in front of you, drained of any strength of and any pretense of pride, just a dying man bleeding and tired and on his knees. Nothing more.

You have a choice in front of you; he asks you to hold him, embrace him as his life leaves him with the knowledge that he accomplished nothing. The choice then is simple; either hug him, or else don't.

It doesn’t matter either way, not really.

Hug him or not he'll die, he'll collapse of his wounds and be nothing more than another corpse rotting on the ground. It's not a choice of good or evil, so much as those concepts even _exist,_ but rather a choice between cruelty and kindness, two things significantly more real and infinitely easier to see.

And no one will blame you, one way or another, because the choice is yours and no one else's, no one else can make it, and it will effect no one but you, and the man about to die. No one will blame you if you hold him, for he is your father, or the closest thing you ever had to one, and what child wouldn't hold their father as he died? Giving him one last fleeting moment of peace?

Otherwise, no one would blame you if you didn't, if you simply stared coldly and quietly at him as he bleeds and dies, a lonely man with not a single thing to his name. Because he was not a kind man, not even a cruel one, but rather one blind to the damage he was causing, which in your experience is monumentally worse.

He loved you, genuinely, as any father would love their child, his love was honest and true. And it was jealous, and scared, and quick to blame and shield from a world you barely got to see. In his bid to protect you he did horrible things, awful things, _cruel_ things. He made choices that hurt people, got people killed, sometimes people he would call his friends, and he kept making those choices out of some mad hope all those cruel things would come back around and make everything alright in the end.

He was mad in his pursuit to find you, keep you safe, and in the end that made him a monster. A monster he was afraid of becoming, a monster he was desperate not to become, a monster he _chooses_ to be at the end of it all.

The reason he's dying is that all those horrible, awful, cruel things caught up with him. All those who stood by his side realized what he was becoming before he did, and turned on him. But he was still blind, still desperate, still just a man, and he fought.

Oh how he fought, with hands and feet and tooth and nail, he fought and killed and bled, and now, here he is. Bleeding and pathetic and dying, as he deserves.

So what will you do?

Will you hold him as he asks? Answer this one final, selfish plea for mercy and pity? Will you embrace him around the shoulders as he leans his head on your neck, wetting it with blood and tears? Will you lean against him, feel his pulse weakening, hear his pleas for forgiveness grow quiet, and his body go stiff, only to relax into a heap soon after?

Or, will you simply take a step back, your heart heavy and angry? Will you see his glossy eyes widen with shock and pain? Will you hear him ask _why?_ Ask _why_ even when the answer is so obvious, so painful? Will you simply watch, as his sobs of sorrow and regret echo weakly, his body thumping on the ground with a pathetic _thud_ on the blood stained dirt?

It doesn't matter either way, not really.

What is cruelty or kindness to a dying man? What does it matter to someone with barely a moment to live? It changes nothing in the grand scheme of things. It won’t save him, it won't make his death any less or more painful, it won't forgive, or excuse what he's done.

It simply.

Doesn't.

Matter.

So, why make a choice at all?

Because you _can_ make a choice, that's why.

That man walked a road built with his choices, and it led him here, bleeding and on his knees. And so you, too, can make a choice here, a choice that changes nothing, a choice that won't redeem or condemn either you or him.

But still, it is a choice.

But still, it is _your choice._

And you get to make it, no one else can take it from you, this meaningless, pointless choice. You, who had been pushed and pulled and dragged through life, by your father, by enemies and friends and family, you get to make a choice, right here, right now.

You are only a child, young and scared and alone and _angry_ in a world that is cruel and seeks to exploit and use you. Up until now, you were helpless. Up until now you were not your own person. Ruled by fear and hate and anger.

Up until now, you didn't have a _choice._

But now, you do, a rather simple one, a choice no one else is there to see you make.

It doesn't matter either way, not really. It will change nothing.

But then again, the choices we most remember, the choices that we keep closest to our hearts and shape ourselves around, are the choices that didn't matter to anyone but ourselves.

So, Buddy.

What will you do?


End file.
